MGFmiRNAloc: Predicting miRNA Subcellular Localization Using Molecular Graph Feature and Convolutional Block Attention Module

MiRNA has distinct physiological functions at various cellular locations. However, few effective computational methods for predicting the subcellular location of miRNA exist, thereby leaving considerable room for improvement. Accordingly, our study proposes the MGFmiRNAloc simplified molecular input line entry system (SMILES) format as a new approach for predicting the subcellular localization of miRNA. Additionally, the graphical convolutional network (GCN) technique was employed to extract the atomic nodes and topological structure of a single base, thereby constructing RNA sequence molecular map features. Subsequently, the channel attention and spatial attention mechanisms (CBAM) were designed to mine deeper for more efficient information. Finally, the prediction module was used to detect the subcellular localization of miRNA. The 10-fold cross-validation and independent test set experiments demonstrate that MGFmiRNAloc outperforms the most sophisticated methods. The results indicate that the new atomic level feature representation proposed in this study could overcome the limitations of small samples and short miRNA sequences, accurately predict the subcellular localization of miRNAs, and be extended to the subcellular localization of other sequences.